1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a graphic processing apparatus which can perform, at high speed, graphic processing such as decomposing or composing of a plurality of graphic data or checking of whether the graphic data are overlapped, and in more detail, it relates to a graphic processing apparatus having a dedicated processing program for specific graphics which can be processed easily and a general purpose processing program, and when the number of the specific graphics is large, all of the graphic data are first processed by the dedicated processing program, whereby the processing can be performed at a higher speed in comparison with a case where all of the graphics are processed by a general purpose processing program.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional graphic processing apparatus will be described. As an example of the conventional apparatus, a graphic processing apparatus used for manufacturing large scale integrated circuits (LSIs) is described. In the graphic processing apparatus for manufacturing LSIs, design data for manufacturing masks are verified or converted into manufacturing data. To do this, the digitized design data (graphic data) for the mask pattern figures are divided into a plurality of rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, and/or trapezoids. Then these plural graphic data are processed.
The above-mentioned conventional graphic processing apparatus comprises a graphic storing unit for storing the plurality of graphic data of a plurality of types (in the above example, four types), a program storing unit for storing a general purpose program which can process all types of the graphic data, and a processing unit for reading the general purpose processing program from the program storing unit to graphically process the graphic data stored in the graphic storing unit.
The processing program is made as a single general purpose processing program which can process all types of figures, in order to minimize the size of the program, to make maintenance easy, and so forth.
The above-mentioned conventional graphic processing apparatus, however, has the following disadvantage.
Namely, the general purpose processing program is made in such a way that it can deal with the most complicated trapezoid graphic data because, if it can deal with the trapezoid graphic data, the other graphic data, such as data of a rectangle, a triangle, or a parallelogram, which can be obtained by specifying some of the parameters of the trapezoid graphic data, can also be dealt with.
That is, when the length of one of the parallel sides of a trapezoid is made to be zero, a triangle can be obtained; when two pairs of the sides are made to be parallel, a parallelogram can be obtained; and when two pairs of the sides are made to be parallel and one interior angle is made to be a right angle, a rectangle can be obtained.
However, since all graphic data are dealt as trapezoid graphic data even when the specified figure is a simple figure such as a triangle or the like, all graphic data have to be processed by the single general purpose processing program, resulting in a disadvantage in that it takes a long time to process the graphics by the processing unit.